The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

I've been sniffing around lots of sites trying to find out the best place to buy silly, small but essential items - e.g. a fuel pump to block gasket for my 1850.
These vary in price from 30p plus vat upwards, plus shipping.
Robsport seem the most sensible but you don't get shipping costs until after the order is placed - although I didn't try phoning during office hours.
£2.81 for shipping a £1.08 oil filler cap gasket, seems fair enough.
Unfortunately I found this out too late so......

Shortly I'll have several fuel pump to block gaskets for sale for £1.50 each including shipping!
The minimum order where I sourced them was £6 including shipping, so I expect to see about ten of them. The worst I came across was £7.20 shipping on a 35p gasket.

Working in a similar trade I can tell you that there's a lot of money to be made on shipping. Consequently small items appear grossly over priced when shipped. It's annoying as sometimes you only want a few parts. I generally avoid places that charge a fortune on postage and take my business elsewhere or try and source things so I can pick them up at shows etc.

Dealing with small orders can be very time consuming relative to the value of the order,
which helps explain why the unit cost is less if you buy by the case/box/carton/pallet etc.



Ian.

sprint95m wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:34 pm Dealing with small orders can be very time consuming relative to the value of the order,
which helps explain why the unit cost is less if you buy by the case/box/carton/pallet etc.



Ian.

Stuffing an item in a pre-made envelope and then chucking it in business mail? Takes of all of 30 seconds.

It is something that annoys me as well, there are many suppliers I refuse to use, because of their ripoff postage charges.

Robsport are one of the few good ones, they go out of their way to charge the minimum amount, which is why I use them allot.

It is also one of the advantage of ebay, they have clamped down on ripoff postage, so you tend to get competitive rates.

Stuffing an item in a pre-made envelope and then chucking it in business mail? Takes of all of 30 seconds.

Indeed, but in order to do that you need the ready availability of a range of pre-made envelopes and cartons to suit your whole supply range together with the space to store them. You also need the infrastructure for business mail, which may be easier now but at one point required a dedicated 'phone line. You also need to employ someone to process the order, pick the part, stuff it in said envelope and chuck it in the mail; that's £7.20/hour these days plus NI and pension contributions...whether they are packing parts, or not.

I appreciate the time and effort involved with running a business and sending out an item, but some post and package costs are over the top. I have been buying quite a bit of stuff recently and there is an enormous difference in the postage costs between suppliers.
A recent polyurethane bush for the throttle linkage was an eye-watering £5.75, but then I thought that it was great that such a part was available. As I went through the purchasing process the cost rose to £11.95 by the time postage and VAT was included. I found an identical part on eBay for £6 all in.
It is certainly worth shopping around for parts and looking at the total cost.

This is why where possible the Club shows postage inclusive prices, what you see is what you pay. That however highlights another overhead; for on line shopping, for customer convenience, each part needs to be weighed and measured these days to determine what the postage cost should be; that is why many suppliers have set postage charges so that one rate catches everything. If postage is individually applied to each item at cost or cost plus, then each time the postage changes, everything needs to be updated. For larger items that are courier sent, increases may not become apparent until the rate has gone up, so a cost plus rate may be applied to cater for this. I had this with shipping the cills, the cost has risen incrementally from £15 to £20 whilst I've been shipping them Currently, it's actually a few pence over £20.

xvivalve wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2017 4:35 pm This is why where possible the Club shows postage inclusive prices, what you see is what you pay. That however highlights another overhead; for on line shopping, for customer convenience, each part needs to be weighed and measured these days to determine what the postage cost should be; that is why many suppliers have set postage charges so that one rate catches everything. If postage is individually applied to each item at cost or cost plus, then each time the postage changes, everything needs to be updated. For larger items that are courier sent, increases may not become apparent until the rate has gone up, so a cost plus rate may be applied to cater for this. I had this with shipping the cills, the cost has risen incrementally from £15 to £20 whilst I've been shipping them Currently, it's actually a few pence over £20.

My Parcelforce account has the simplest tariff option I could get. Any parcel whether that is a small jiffy bag or a large box up to 30kgs, the cost is the same at £4.90 + fuel surcharge currently at 7%. Total of approx £5.25

I could save on postage of the smaller items but the majority of stuff I send is at the heavier and bulkier end of the scale. My customers are happier to pay the extra on the few small items shipped than pay for all of the extra labour involved in saving a few quid postage. May be different if it was my own goods being sent out but I just recharge it so it doesn't really affect me.

Parcel company rate sheets are very over complicated as a rule. Most want to know exact dimensions and weight of every parcel sent which in our case is 100 - 150 per day. To get that info alone would virtually be a full time job for somebody.

The cills when wrapped are between 168 cm to 185 cm in length, depending on what section is sent; would they fit into your £5.25 category? Plus VAT presumably?

If so, would they pick up from an address remote from your's?